Valerius Cordus - Research Article from Science and Its Times

German physician, botanist, pharmacologist, and chemist who won the admiration of his contemporary scientists even before his early death from malaria. Cordus synthesized ether; developed ways to categorize plants; invented phytography, the systematic science of describing plants; updated and augmented the authoritative first-century catalog of medicinal plants prepared by the Greek physician Dioscorides Pedanius Anazarbeus; and wrote the first pharmacopoeia, the Nuremberg Dispensatorium (1546). (A pharmacopoeia is a reference source detailing the dosages and administration of medicinal preparations and drugs.) Swiss naturalist Konrad von Gesner (1516-1565) edited and published several of Cordus's posthumous works, including the revision of Dioscorides (1561).